Caucasian War

The Caucasian War was an invasion of the Caucasus by the Russian Empire which resulted in the Russian annexation of the North Caucasus and the ethnic cleansing of Circassians. Russia conquered the Muslim tribes of the Caucasus after decades of unconventional warfare, and the Dagestan-based Caucasian Imamate waged jihad against Russia from 1829 to 1859, when Imam Shamil surrendered. In 1864, Russia abolished the Avar Khanate and annexed all of the North Caucasian states into its empire.

Russia's reasons for conquering the Caucasus included having better lines of communication across the empire, as well as removing the threat of Ottoman-influenced states from its southern borders. In 1817, the first Russian invasion, commanded by Aleksey Yermolov, faced fierce resistance, and the end of the first invasion coincided with the death of Czar Alexander II of Russia and the ensuing Decembrist Revolt in 1825. Between 1825 and 1833, wars with Turkey and Persia preoccupied the Russians, so little attention was paid to the conquest of theh Caucasus.

In 1829, Islamic fundamentalists led by Dagestani imam Ghazi Muhammad declared that holy war could not occur until all of the Caucasus observed pure sharia law instead of a mixture of Avar traditional customs and Islamic law; Ghazi Muhammad created the theocratic "Caucasian Imamate" with his followers. The imamate declared jihad on Russia from its capital of Gimry, and Russian military intervention was required to save its Avar Khanate vassal. From 1834 to 1859, Imam Shamil led an army of Caucasian mountaineers in a guerrilla war against the Russians, launching a sweeping offensive against Russian outposts in Avaria in 1843 and defeating an offensive led by General Mikhail Semenovich Vorontsov in 1845. During the Crimean War of 1853-1856, the Russians brokered a truce with Shamil, but hostilities resumed in 1855. From 1856 to 1859, a 250,000-strong Russian army under Aleksandr Baryatinsky broke the mountaineers' resistance, and Shamil agreed to a peaceful surrender in September 1859, being received by Czar Alexander in Moscow before living in exile in Kaluga and Kiev; he died while on the hajj in 1871. War with the Circassians in the west continued until 1864, and the Russians oversaw ethnic cleansing against the Circassians, killing at least 75% of the Circassian population (600,000+ people) and at most 95-97% (1,500,000 people), and forcing another 1,500,000 to flee to Persia or Turkey. Many other oppressed Muslim groups also fled to the Ottoman Empire or to Persia to evade persecution.